I am not one to beat a dead horse, generally-speaking. I don’t like seizing on a particular argument and continually pointing out the ways in which it is dead wrong once I’ve clearly established its wrongness. In the case of the popular opinion that “post-rock is dead,” this is doubly…

By now, the fruitful conjunction between Heavy Blog and A Thousand Arms should be known to all who follow our post-rock oriented content. A year and a half ago, one of the most joyous results of this conjunction came to be and that was me getting acquainted with the music of Seeress.…

Post-rock is dead! Post-rock is dying! Post-rock never happened! You’ve probably heard all three of these things (OK, probably not the last one) over the past few years. In a way, those are accurate statements but only if you have a very narrow definition of what post-rock is.

Having had a direct involvement with America’s first post-rock dedicated festival, dunk!usa, I know first hand how hard it is to mount a successful event featuring largely fringe artists. When you live in my bubble and you book Russian Circles and Pelican to headline a two-day event with 20 more high-quality artists in a town neither of them has ever played before, you can become lulled into the mindset that all you have to do is hang out and watch the tickets sell themselves. When you discover how wrong you are, that location is massively important, that timing is a key factor, that even though a band like Russian Circles seems huge to a nerd like you, the reality is that probably one out of every forty people has even heard of them, it can be kind of a bummer. dunk!usa was an amazing event that not a ton of people had the privilege of enjoying. So when Nason Frizzell of the band PILLARS approached me with the idea of doing Post. Festival – essentially a dunk!usa without the post-rock name value, the first two things I felt were (a) excitement, because obviously I was 100% ready to get back at trying to grow this scene and (b) cynicism, because I knew how my expectations of fan dedication had been flattened somewhat by my previous experiences. As it turns out, I’m feeling a bit better about the state of “post” music in America as of this moment.

I first became acquainted with the Bozeman, MT post-rock band RANGES what seems like ages ago, though somehow it was only 2015. They were a virtually unknown band that had just caught the attention of a small collection of blog writers and diligent genre fans with their 24-minute concept single…

One thing we try to emphasize here at Heavy Blog on a regular basis is just how much we rely on and appreciate you, our readers, for our continued existence and whatever modicums of success we achieve. This isn’t just us trying to artificially flatter you all for cynical purposes. It comes from a truly genuine place. Though all of us here have our very distinct perspectives and viewpoints that guide the general direction and tone of the website, we are always keeping an ear to the ground and eyes on what’s going on around us to make sure we’re doing the best we can to keep giving you all reasons to stick around with us. And in a time when the fates of news and media sites large and small continue to be as precarious as they’ve ever been, it’s incredibly important that we continue to adapt to the new realities of media consumption. While it’s true that we don’t have the same financial pressures of many of our peers by virtue of the fact that we remain a completely independent, volunteer-run, not-for-profit institution, it also means that the margin separating us from continuing to exist and even grow what we’re doing and being unable to operate without losing a lot of money is incredibly thin.

It’s rare that I feel the need to Google a song’s title in order to have any idea what in the world it might mean. In the case of Manchester, NH post-metal band Girih and their latest single, “Sinneslöschen,” my Googling honestly only raised more questions than provided answers. All of…

It would be easy to expect most people to come into this wondering who Old Faith is, assuming they’re a fresh band hitting the scene with a debut record. And you’d actually be partially correct, but there’s more to the story where this Greensboro, North Carolina quartet is concerned. This…

In case you missed it, we announced a couple of months ago that Heavy Blog will be sponsoring Post. Festival, the US’s only (and thus also premier) major post-rock/metal/whatever festival on October 19th and 20th at Indiana City Brewery Co. in Indianapolis, IN. The festival is shaping up to be an incredible event, featuring the likes of The Appleseed Cast, Outrun the Sunlight, Heron, This Patch of Sky, and far more. I wanted to talk to the festival organizers about what fans can expect from the weekend, about what makes holding a post-rock festival in the US a more daunting challenge than in Europe, and about why they believe the genre of post-rock is as strong as it’s ever been and only getting stronger.

I guess we’ve hit the doldrums of summer for new music, though you certainly wouldn’t be able to tell that by a look at our most recent Editors’ Picks and Death’s Door columns, which were positively overflowing with good new material. So I’ll revise that: I guess we’ve hit the doldrums of summer for new post-rock. I’m not sure what it is, but July proved to be a struggle to find many releases of note, though what did manage to rise to the top was pretty exceptional. Slower times like these though offer a perfect opportunity to take a look back at some of the bands making waves in the scene in the past year or so and remember why they’re so great, as well as catch up on some things you missed the first time around. And there’s no better vehicle for that than the compilation, which is what makes the timing of the latest edition of one of the best post-rock/metal compilations around from our friends and merch partners at A Thousand Arms impeccable!